


the breathing triangle

by lollercakes



Series: Two Sides of the Same Coin [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 14:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13320354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollercakes/pseuds/lollercakes
Summary: why did he believe her when she said her son was talking to her through the lights? it's crazy. he knows it. they both do. but maybe he owed her this. maybe he needed to make up for not believing her before.





	the breathing triangle

**Author's Note:**

> There's mention of non-con which could be triggering but it is not a detailed account - more a reference. Proceed with caution.

She didn’t want to be here. Couldn’t remember how she got here. Why she was waking up on a ratty mattress tucked in the corner of some room, sheets askew and her clothes missing. 

 

Something was wrong. So very, very, wrong. And she couldn’t remember how this all happened. 

 

Looking around her she knew two things: 

 

  1. She was alone. 
  2. She had had sex. 



 

Those were true and they contradicted each other, but she didn’t know how else to make sense of them. It was that reality - that cold wind that filled her - that made her skin burst with gooseflesh and her stomach churn as she scrambled for her clothes. 

 

The room was dark, lit only by the light of the moon, but finding her things was easy since nothing was there but a mattress and a tossed aside copy of  _ On the Road _ . 

 

“Fuck,” she groaned as her body ached and her head spun. It wasn’t the same torture as a hangover and that new fact made the bile rise in her throat. Pulling on her jeans, she forced herself to focus as she grabbed her bag and shirt and stepped into the hallway. 

 

She didn’t remember this house with it’s beat up walls and the mangey carpet lifting at the edges. She should have remembered this house. She never would have come here. Another red flag joined the others and her mind reeled. 

 

Who brought her to this dump? Who fucked her and left her? 

 

What happened at that party? 

\---------

 

“Joyce,” Hopper snapped his fingers in front of her, his once lanky form having filled out in the last year and become something a bit more interesting to look at. She hadn’t noticed, at least not lately. 

 

The month had gone by in a blur, the mystery of the night she’d woken up not knowing where she was had slowly eaten away at her until she didn’t know which way was up or down. It was starting to become noticable. Like right now. 

 

“Earth to Joyce,” Hopper’s laugh died on his lips as he took in the faraway look on her face. “Hey, what’s going on?” He stood up more fully and tilted his head, one hand coming to rest on her shoulder until she stepped instinctively out from under it. 

 

“Sorry,” she muttered and turned. Her stomach rolled unexpectedly and she lurched away from him and towards the bushes beside his car, decorating the leaves with her breakfast. 

 

He was there then, hand on her back and soft voice helping her right herself again. She took the handkerchief he offered without a word and shifted away from him, arms wrapping around her chest protectively. 

 

“What’s going on?” He pressed and ducked his head to follow hers as she looked away. She knew he wouldn’t stop prying until he knew the answer and that just wouldn’t do. She couldn’t tell him what had happened. He’d lose his mind. She’d cry. They’d make a mess of things. 

 

No. He wasn’t allowed to know what was going on. 

 

“I’m just not feeling well today. I think I’m going to head home. If Cooper asks - “ 

 

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it. You need a lift?” Shaking her head, she dodged his searching gaze and started walking towards the school parking lot without bothering to say a goodbye. 

 

If she had, she wouldn’t have been able to keep the words from spilling out of her. 

 

\-----------

 

Senior year started to disappear along with all of her favourite clothes. She couldn’t fit into  _ anything _ and she damn well knew why but refused - absolutely refused - to admit that what was wrong was something she needed to deal with, and deal with soon. 

 

When she finally collected enough money from her tips waiting the counter at Benny’s, she found her own way to the doctor and begged him to help her. He wouldn’t do it. God and judgement and all that bullshit that she hadn’t had the guts to argue against. Maybe if she lived in a bigger city, maybe if she hadn’t been knocked up by a stranger, maybe if she hadn’t been at that party… 

 

The maybe’s were starting to suffocate her, piling up against her more every day. 

 

If she was right - and she knew she was - she’d have a baby in her arms by mid-summer. She couldn’t hide her belly much longer - not with the way it poked out of her now - and she had no idea how she would finish school. She was bound to become a statistic. Another unwed teen mom who can’t escape the ass-backwards town that she grew up in. 

 

The bitterness started to show, a bit more with every day, and her friends took notice by giving her a wide berth. 

 

Everyone but Hopper, at least. He didn’t give her space. He crowded in. Picking her up after her shifts, helping her carry her books. The way he looked at her broke her heart and she knew then and there that she had to break his now while it still could be broken otherwise he’d be trapped here with her because she knew, god did she know, that with every day this carried on he was one day closer to falling in too deep. 

 

“You can’t keep doing this, Hop,” she grumbled as he opened the passenger door for her. Reluctantly, she settled herself into the seat as he came around to the driver’s side. 

 

“Sure I can,” he replied and grinned, his hand coming to rest beside hers on the console. She could feel the heat of him, could smell the soap and earnestness surrounding them, and she knew she had to cut him loose. Had to escape while she still could. Before she fell in too deep herself. 

 

She stayed silent as he hummed along to the music, his fingers brushing over her knuckles as he snuck a glance at her. His eyes burned her skin and her face flamed, the tears coming hot to the back of her eyes. 

 

“You can let me out here,” she strained, her voice tight as the emotions clogged her throat. 

 

“Don’t be stupid, we’re almost there,” he joked and his smile stabbed at her like daggers. 

 

“Jim, let me out, please.” 

 

“Joyce, come on. I know you don’t want to owe me anything for these rides but honestly it’s no problem - I like -” 

 

“Stop the damn car Hop!” She screamed and it felt good, like the thing that was eating her up in side escaped for just that briefest of seconds. The tears sprung free with it though and her nails bit into her palms as she stared out the window. 

 

To his credit, his tires squealed as he pulled to the side of the road, his hand shoving the car into park with a jerk. “Joyce, please tell me what’s going on.” His words were quiet as the engine cut, the radio disappearing along with the gentle hum. 

 

She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t do this to him. All he’d ever been was her friend, her too-tall,  sandbox-hogging, smoke-sharing lughead of a partner in crime and now she had to push him away because the alternative of taking pity on her, of marrying her to save her and not because he really loved her was really just too much. 

 

She had to get away. She’d leave tonight. Go stay with Aunt Tabitha in the city until this baby was out of her and she could come back and be normal Joyce again, a few months behind but sans baby and sans trapped teen mom status. 

 

At least, that was what she told herself as the sobs wracked her frame while she walked away from Hopper’s car, his voice getting weaker as she broke from his arms and strode determinedly towards the forest and her house beyond it. 

 

\-----------

 

Giving the baby up for adoption was what she had planned to do but two weeks after arriving she met Lonnie. He didn’t care that she was pregnant, that she was a mess. He didn’t care about any of it and that was refreshing, enticing, and too good to be true. 

 

When they moved back to Hawkins a year after Jonathan was born - enough time to play hide the math with the towns gossip-mill - she half expected to find Hopper still in town and bumming his way through some manual labour job to pay for his old man’s trailer on the lake. 

 

But he wasn’t there. He’d gone off and joined the military, had been sent to Vietnam for god-knows how long, and she wasn’t quite sure why that made her pause. It’s what she’d wanted for him, after all. She couldn’t begrudge him for getting his life together without her. 

 

So she hid it on the backburner of her mind - focused on her sleep deprived nights and the stretches of days when Lonnie barely came home. He said he was out working, but she wasn’t a fool. Without a doubt he was straying from her but what could she do? She barely let him touch her, cringed every time she had to spread her legs and let anyone close to her again. 

 

The realization that she was broken - that she may never recover - had made her spin herself into a web so tangled and messy that rarely could she find her way back to what was supposed to be normal again. The label of being  _ crazy Joyce _ had given her cover and she couldn’t argue with what was true. 

 

It was only after a dinner with Karen Wheeler - fueled by cheap wine - that she finally told someone about that night she woke up alone in a strange bed. It had spilled out of her when Karen pushed for an explanation on why her sex life was non-existent, the words coming in a jumbled mess as she stared at the radio across the room. The woman had been sympathetic, unassuming, and Joyce had been thankful for that small grace. 

 

Leaving that dinner she had been defiant of her past, determined to be something that she was not, and she’d stomped home and took Lonnie to bed that night. 

 

That’s how Will had come into the world - the exact opposite way of Jonathan but still not enough to make her really, truly, better. 

 

\-----------

 

Divorcing Lonnie had been simple. She’d simply up and left the day after he first raised his hand to her, taking her boys and escaping to the house her parents had left her on the edge of the woods. The police report she’d filed had been reluctant but necessary, her mind focused on keeping her boys with her and not him. 

 

The years without a man were some of her best ones as she came into her own, lost herself in her jobs and focused on raising two kids who were her world. Somewhere along the way she even rediscovered comfort in her own skin, her thoughts quieting and being kinder to her as she faced down her demons. 

 

It was unexpected then when she stumbled past Hopper in a bar, drowning in drink and the rumour-mill churning with word of a dead child and a bitter divorce. He was not supposed to come back. He was supposed to live his life and make something of it. 

 

But fate had stolen it from him and she couldn’t bear to let him get lost in himself, like she had all those years ago. So she sidled up next to him and chased his drinks one-for-one.

 

When they somehow found themselves in his trailer, his body hulking over hers on a ratty couch with beer cans strewn around them, her memories came flooding back like a vicious beating. 

 

“Joyce - “ he called as she curled in on herself, his hands flying into the air and away from her as though she had burned him. 

 

“I don’t know who Jonathan’s father is,” she hiccuped the words, her hands hiding her face. The words cut through the haze of alcohol like a bucket of ice water. 

 

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to admit it was Lonnie either,” he laughs her admission off and reaches for his beer can, missing and almost sliding off the couch.

 

“That isn’t what I mean. Hop, I left because I was pregnant and I didn’t know who the father was,” she’s standing, pacing now as she explains what she remembers. She doesn’t know why she does it, why now, why with this much drink between the two of them she’s certain that it’s the best time to relay her darkest secret. But she does. And when she’s finished, when she’s looking down at his shocked expression, she remembers then that he’s Chief of Police. 

 

That he’s the absolute last person she should be telling this to, no matter how long she’s wanted to. 

 

And so she leaves. He never calls. She never prompts him again. Time moves on. 

 

\----------

 

Will disappearing shakes the ground beneath her and she’s forced back into Hopper’s line of sight. Despite working hard to stay separate from him, to hide from the secret she’d haphazardly shared with him, she has no choice but to fight tooth and nail to make him  _ see _ . 

 

The moment she explains the lights and how Will is still  _ here _ , she knows she’s lost him. The same look from that night in the trailer, the one where she’d told him everything, spreads across his face and she feels the hope in her chest waver. 

 

But he comes through. Even after everything. And he’s there to help her boy, to bring him back to life, and it’s like she never left him, like he never betrayed her on the couch that time ago. 

 

It’s like it’s almost okay again between them. Sharing rides, seeing each other at work, friendly with looks that promise more but never give in. 

 

When he disappears for what seems like forever after Will is found, she writes the whole thing off like it was all a fantasy in her mind she made up. She finds solace in Bob. Finds comfort in his lightness. In the way he doesn’t make her relive the past. And she falls into it. Heals in it. Finds a piece of her that went missing that night all those years ago. 

 

Hopper’s return goes almost unnoticed until he starts accompanying her and Will to his doctor’s appointments, excuses about Police responsibilities such a crock of shit that neither of them bother to push it. She lets him come and she’s thankful she has someone to count on, even if it’s still strained. 

 

\-----------

 

“Why did you believe me when I said the lights were talking?” She questions one day, her body leaning against his side as the music from the Snow Ball plays behind them. He stiffens slightly before his chest fills, the exhale making her hair blow about her forehead. 

 

“Because I didn’t believe you once before and it was the worst thing I could have done,” he admits quietly, stilling. She looks up then and catches him staring down at her, his arm coming to rest across her shoulders. “You told me something once. About why you left in Senior year. And I didn’t want to believe you - “

 

“Jim - “ she frowns and pulls back instinctively before he rests both hands on her shoulders, eyes intense. 

 

“Not because I thought you were lying. But because I refused to believe that you would keep that to yourself. That you didn’t think I would have helped you all those years ago. It was self-serving and stupid and I didn’t want to believe that it was anything other than the alcohol confusing you,” he pauses and wipes at the tear that’s sliding down her cheek. “This time I needed to give you the benefit of the doubt or that was it for us. And I don’t want us to be over. Not then, and definitely not now.” 

 

The words wash over her in a confusing mess, the honesty behind them making her head spin. 

 

He knew the truth now. It had come full circle. 

 

“I didn’t know how to tell you then. You weren’t meant to stay here in Hawkins and I knew that if I told you… Maybe that you wouldn’t leave. That you’d try to stay and make an honest woman out of me and I couldn’t stand the thought. I’m sorry for not trusting you then.” It tumbles from her awkwardly, her fingers tangling together as the cold wind snaps across her neck. 

 

“Joyce,” he says it quietly, his finger coming to lift her chin. “I believe you. I forgive you. But I need you to forgive yourself - none of this… None of it was your doing and the fact that you’ve built all of this out of something… So painful… It makes me admire you. Makes me love you even more.” 

 

His lips ghosting over hers, unassuming, gentle, makes her body shatter into a million pieces as she reaches her hands to his lapels to pull him down to her as she finally steps out of the shadows.


End file.
